A Not-So-Fond Farewell to La Bachmann

La Bachmann took herself out of the campaign this afternoon. Rick Perry didn't, but that's because Goodhair knows that his financial dayplanner — all those names, all those numbers, especially the zeroes — is worth more to the remaining contenders than anything that can be offered by the now departed Girl With The Faraway Eyes.

For those of you scoring at home, and even those of you who aren't (Hey, Olbermann. Get back on the trail, son. I'm stealing your material here.), in last night's caucuses, Bachmann garnered approximately 1,200 more votes than she managed to bribe out of the good people of Iowa with a free Randy Travis show last summer, when she won the completely useless Ames Straw Poll. I mean, honestly, from the cover of Newsweek to this — a morning when it all comes a'cropper and Willard Romney, mere millimeters from actual sincerity, calls you a "tough competitor."

(Bachmann's campaign was actually notable for the fact that, while she belabored Rick Perry over his decision to mandate the HPV vaccine in Texas, and while she nearly decapitated Newt Gingrich when she thought he was patronizing her — and he was, but the man would patronize Pericles, so there we are — she left Willard pretty much alone. The toughest thing she did to him was invent the "Newt Romney" character in the debates, which was as much as shot at the flailing Gingrich as it was at Willard, who sailed serenely on.)

The whole thing never made a lot of sense. She was a backbench loudmouth, and she entered the campaign already having a track record of saying things that sounded like she was channelling evening drive-time talk-radio from Mars. In fact, she first came to national prominence by gobsmacking Chris Matthews on Hardball one night prior to the 2008 elections when she seemed to suggest that the media should investigate her colleagues in Congress to find out if they were "anti-American." This got her onto the A-list compiled by the teenage bookers of cable news shows and, as we know, that is a springboard toward national prominence in contemporary politics. (Please shoot me now.) It did not stop during the campaign. While taking that swipe at Goodhair over Gardasil, she gilded the loony lily by claiming that "a woman" told her that the vaccine "caused mental retardation." More gobs were smacked. Then, there was her relentless characterization — which continued right up through her less-than-hinged speech Tuesday night — of the Affordable Care Act as "socialized medicine," as though the hyenas in the health-insurance industry to whom the law has gifted a few million new customers would have signed on to anything like that. Quite simply, on issue after issue, La Bachmann has demonstrated that she doesn't have the faintest clue what she's talking about. She has built a formidable public career not despite that flaw, but because of it. That should give us all pause.

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She's not fading away. Her Tea Party credentials guarantee her a career as a speaker. Her re-election to Congress from her carefully tailored district is a lock, if she chooses to run again. If she declines, and if she also decides not to run for statewide office in Minnesota, she's going to have offers as a TV pundit by the bucketful. (Again, I say, watch out, Greta. You're the target of opportunity.) She will be a presence in our politics for the foreseeable future, and perhaps all the rest of us can do is enjoy the show because, hell, if all we have left is Willard and Rick Santorum, we're really gonna miss her. I am, anyway. Set me up again, bartender, and sing along, why doncha?

So if you're down on your luck/And you can't harmonize/Find a girl with far away eyes/And if you're downright disgusted/ And life ain't worth a dime/ Get a girl with faraway eyes.

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